Summary
In this episode, tactical strength and conditioning coach Mark Christiani talks about his transition from military service to coaching and the lessons learned along the way. He discusses how structure and adaptability from military life translate to strength coaching, why the Army’s Holistic Health and Fitness initiative demands better preparation for coaches, and how the field can grow through mentorship and structured internships.
Key Takeaways
Tactical S&C needs structured internship pipelines.
Military discipline and adaptability improve coaching.
The Army has hundreds of unfilled coaching roles.
Nutrition and education drive soldier readiness.
Mentorship is key for young coaches entering tactical S&C.
Collaboration between collegiate and military coaches boosts effectiveness.
Quote
“But in the tactical setting, I think we need to develop some sort of internship pipeline. Specifically talking about the military right now, the Army has hundreds and hundreds of jobs that will be coming available in the next five years… but there’s no experiential internship for young coaches to get geared in that direction.” — Mark Christiani
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Mark Christiani:
But in the tactical setting, I think we need to develop some sort of internship pipeline.
specifically talking about the military right now, the army has hundreds and hundreds of jobs, strength coach jobs that will be coming available in the next five years. They already have hundreds of, they have hundreds of jobs and many of them are unfilled. They have hundreds more becoming available as they accelerate this holistic health and fitness rollout with strength coaches going to the brigades, but there’s no experiential like
internship for these people, their young coaches to kind of get geared in that direction to fall into those
Connor:
What’s going on Samson Strength Coach Collective listeners? On today’s episode, we have a guest recommended to me by one of our former guests, Alex Redshaw. And I’m very excited to speak with him. I mean, truly, I feel like you have a lot of great information about you and I’ve heard a lot of great things. And then also you have a fantastic beard.
So if I can introduce you to everybody, it’s Mark Christiani. Thank you so much for coming on the show
Mark Christiani:
Hey guys, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.
Connor:
Absolutely. Well, can you just give us a rundown of your career background of your history and strength and conditioning and then what you’re currently doing?
Mark Christiani:
Yeah, so I have a little bit of a roundabout way that I got to strength and conditioning. Went to college.
When I was 18, did the normal kinesiology degree, started working in worksite health and wellness. spent a few years there. I did like group exercise classes, a lot of personal training and a very wellness focused career. I enjoyed that, but I’ve always felt like I wanted to join the military. So at 25 years old, I was like, boom, let’s join the military. Went to the army recruiting station next door and was like, sign me up.
Got signed up in the military, had a special operations contract, an 18 X-ray contract to try out for special forces. So did the basic training, did all the stuff. Tried out for special forces, did not make it on that try, but I was recommended to go to a ranger regiment due to some… ⁓
high physical testing that I did when I was there. So I got to go through a separate selection all over again and did the whole ranger assessment selection or RAS program. Did pass that one.
Did pretty well in that, enjoyed that as much as you can enjoy it. And ended up at a special operations unit, the 1st Battalion 75th Ranger Regiment, where we had strength and conditioning coaches. We had what was called the Thor III program. Back then we had strength coaches, it’s Métis, we physical therapists, and it was really getting built up. Previously it had been called the Ranger Athlete Warrior program.
Thor 3 kind of took the moniker. We had some contracted strength coaches and that was my first experience outside of the collegiate setting, seeing a strength coach in the tactical setting. When I got there, was like, this is cool. I didn’t know we had this. This is great. We had some nice gyms and all that stuff and they would take us through our workouts. Just like any college strength coach would. They had workout posted on the board. They would take units through. They would help out with reconditioning, those kind of things. Got to know those guys with my background, kind of wanted to do that.
Asked them how I could get into strength and conditioning in the military They told me I had to get out of the military because there are no Service members at the time who were strength coaches and I don’t think there still are any that I know of that are strength and conditioning coaches so When it had got out of the military got a master’s degree using my GI bill So thank you federal government for that And I was told when I got out I needed to get some years of experience three to five years of experience in the college setting
So when I was going to school, I started coaching at Savannah state with a really good coach, Justin van Dusen. He had just started and I was his first intern shortly after coming on as an intern. He was able to get me a paid paid position to be his assistant and get to run teams. There is a, is a D two school. So we got to experience the like two strength coaches do all the teams kind of thing. Work with some like cheerleaders work with a lot of track and field, that kind of stuff. and then football as well.
was lucky enough to be able to go over to the University of South Carolina with their football team for a little while and come back to Savannah State, take what I learned there and work with Coach Justin again. And we built that program to be really, really a solid strength and conditioning program. Then right at about the same time we both left, he went on to bigger, better college things. The Army H2F program stood up, which is the Army Holistic Health and Fitness program.
So the army was bringing in a bunch of strength and conditioning coaches to run their human performance department, very much like the Thor three department in the special operations side. So having that special operations background, being an athlete in that program, and then got hired on as a head strength and conditioning coach at a unit at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. Did that for a few years there, ⁓ three years there.
with a great unit. I really liked working with all those guys have a lot of good strength coaches that came through there that worked with me and a really good program director who’s currently runs that Mops and Mo’s podcast, which is a nice little military podcast. talk about military health and wellness all the time. And then
Took my current role now with O2X human performance where I am working with the Army Reserve So I just kind of switched sides from the active army to the Army Reserve side And we are the first strength coaches in the Army Reserve building that program from the ground up So I work with soldiers of all MOS’s all across the Army Reserve in the state of Florida It’s about 5,000 all total soldiers that are in the area about 3,600 are my immediate area that I can work with in person
and then the rest are virtual that I can work with outside of that. And I know that was like the longest answer possible to your question.
Connor:
No, no, no, no, no, I love it and I love the long answers because it always
drives so many questions. know, I mean, the 5,000 members, mean, it’s, ⁓ you know, certainly a little bit more of a challenge, I’m sure, than having all the teams at Savannah.
Mark Christiani:
Yeah, yeah, it’s
tough. good thing is a lot of soldiers are pretty self-sufficient. They need little advice here and there, or they just want an exercise program. They’re going to run it on their own. Don’t have to be like right next to them.
Coaching them up, but the team that we have, we have four strength coaches kind of for the Southeast region. I think we just looked at our year long numbers. We did like over 800, almost 900 consoles. I think we gave out like six, 700 programs, something like that. I might have those numbers back, but like, I think it was like 800 consoles and like 700 and some programs in the course of a year. So a lot of programming in the tactical setting where we are a lot of virtual where we are. Cause the reserve soldiers only, we only see them like once a month. So get.
Connor:
Wow.
Mark Christiani:
in with them once a month, kind of seeing what they need, using their army fitness test to kind of guide us in the physical capacity that they need. But then we also do things like nutrition counseling, ⁓ mental performance kind of stuff related to sport. We do some sleep readiness education and then we interface with the chaplains to do spiritual wellness as well.
Connor:
wow, I actually haven’t heard of that, the spiritual wellness aspect really.
Mark Christiani:
Yeah, so the army included those five pillars. added the spiritual wellness and they brought the chaplains in. And what we do is just refer to the chaplains, but they do a lot of team building activities, a lot of ⁓ things really based around finding your purpose. It’s pretty cool stuff. Like it goes hand in hand with the mental performance side. You would see a lot in ⁓ sports, like sports psychology.
Connor:
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, absolutely. mean, that’s the whole point is finding a purpose and ⁓ recognizing why you do things on a daily basis. So I love that.
Mark Christiani:
⁓ absolutely.
Connor:
Yeah. Well,
you know, first of all, I appreciate your service. My father was actually an Army Ranger. So it’s very cool to speak with you. was in the 101st Airborne during the Vietnam War. ⁓ So ⁓ he was drafted. And I remember when he was drafted, when he was 19, I remember when I was 19, I was complaining about having to take anatomy. So we live very different lives.
Mark Christiani:
nice.
Okay.
Hey
man, it’s fun. if he, yeah, like he obviously had the opportunity to go to ranger school, do some really cool things in the army. It’s a good time. It’s hard training, but it really shapes you as a person. And I think you come out on the other end as a better leader, better, ⁓ more motivated person, in my opinion anyway. Like not everyone has the same experience, but my experience was I got a lot out of it.
Connor:
Absolutely. Well, how did your experience go? Because I’m sure it’s a little bit of a whirlwind to start off in health and wellness and then join the military and then be told, know, okay, basically you have to leave the military now in order to be able to follow your passion. What was that process like? How are you able to kind of do the soul searching aspect of it and find out what you really wanted to do?
Mark Christiani:
So it was a good process because I had the coaches that were in our Thor 3 program. ⁓ They were able to answer my questions. I was kind of wavering on whether I wanted to stay in the military or not. I was 30 at the time, so had a five-year commitment. was turning 30. In military years, that is ancient.
In like human years, not bad at all, but in army years, they’re like, dude, you’re going to die soon. So, so it’s kind of on the edge. Like, do I want to continue doing this? Um, do I want to, cause if I stayed in another five years, it was kind of like, Hey, this is going to be the career. I talked to those coaches and they were, they were great guiding me on the path, gave me the outline, what I needed to do to get hired by the military, step by step. And then.
Starting grad school right after the military was great because it was structured like I came from this super structured life where it was like wake up in the morning do PT then you go to work and then you do like tasks XYZ then you train then you work out again and then you go to sleep like you eat sleep and it was very structured life so
Going to grad school gave me some structure when I got out of the military and I really enjoyed that because it was like you have classes. Like I’m working at Savannah State in the morning from 6 a.m. to noon. Then I have classes and after my classes it’s study, like write papers, homework, know eat, bed and that structure kept me regular and I really enjoyed that. So anyone getting out of the military I would recommend looking at school or something to keep some of that structure in your life just because you don’t want that to break down.
My experience when that did break down over COVID and sometimes not a great experience, had to deal with some things and get back into like a structured kind of regimented life and that worked out well for me. But I had a good transition out and then going into coaching.
A lot of the skills I learned in the military translated really well to coaching. Discipline translates really well. Being loud translates real well. And then the leadership skills I learned in Ranger school, if you can lead a platoon or a squad of soldiers when they’re hungry, eating two meals a day, staying awake for 20 hours a day in the freezing cold winter in the mountains, mean, getting some college athletes to lift some weights.
So I’m not gonna say it’s easy, but you learn some things, some tips and tricks and some leadership values that you can kind of take with you and makes that a challenge, but something that you can provide a lot to the organization with your skills.
Connor:
Yeah, certainly a little bit more helpful to be equipped to handle those situations.
Mark Christiani:
yeah, absolutely.
Connor:
Is that something you see a lot of people who leave the military struggle with is that lack of structure once they initially ⁓ leave?
Mark Christiani:
Yeah, yeah, so I had some friends, really good dudes when we were in the military. They left, the lack of structure wasn’t great. Kind of that freedom when they got out, like maybe they started school, but there was no one there to help like kind of guide them and keep them on task, like a squad leader or a platoon sergeant would be.
And it took him a little while. Most of the ones that I stay in contact with are doing pretty well right now. But it might have taken a little while. It takes some hard lessons learned. Maybe.
you know, leaving college and coming back or like leaving a job and then coming back into the workforce to kind of get your feet underneath you and see like, you know, they’re a life moment. That’s like, Hey, like I need to get it back together. need to get that discipline back that I had in the military. And I’m not saying everyone needs to be as disciplined as like wake up at 5am, go for your run, like do all this stuff. But some level of discipline in your life does make it a little bit easier to stay on task and push forward to like a successful career, I guess, if that’s
if that’s what you’re looking for.
Connor:
Yeah, you know, I think about it even from a microscopic level. Undergrad to grad school for me was very different because I was taking, you know, five, six classes at a time, whatever, an undergrad. And so I had to be places all the time. And then all of a sudden for grad school, I figured out, okay, I only have to take two classes and I really have to study on my own and do all these things. And I was not good at it.
Mark Christiani:
That is a really good analogy. That is very similar. That is right on.
Connor:
Excellent. You know, I’m curious too. Ultimately, there’s a lot of talk about in strength and conditioning in the collegiate sector, you know, those who are coaches who didn’t play the sport and those who did play the sport and different experiences that they may have. Obviously within the tactical sector, there’s a lot of lay people or non-military personnel who end up becoming tactical strength and conditioning coaches versus your own experience where you served and then were able to transition to the tactical side.
Do you see a major difference? Do you feel like those skills that you learned have helped you relate to the ⁓ people you work with better? Or do you of view it same as collegiate where ultimately if you can adapt to cultures, it’s not too big of a deal.
Mark Christiani:
I think there’s two ways of looking at it. There’s the strength and conditioning culture, the human performance side. And coaches from collegiate that come over to the tactical side are no problem in the human performance side, right? They pick it up. It’s just, getting people better at stronger, faster, jump higher, those kinds of skills. And then there’s the tactical side of it where it’s like speaking the military language. Like,
I speak military. My dad was in the military. His dad was in the military. I was in the military. Like I can speak army, army specifically. I shouldn’t say military. Like I speak army. I can kind of get by on Marine. If he brought me in the air force, I’m like, uh-huh. Like, I don’t know what you guys are saying, but there’s a lot of like acronyms, naming culture, ⁓ just ranks army ranks is one thing. Like it’s easy to walk into a room.
if you have that experience and address people like, hey, Sarr, like Lieutenant, like ma’am, sir, all that kind of stuff. And you get that instant respect when you kind of know what everyone is supposed to be called because they’re like, you were in like, okay, cool. Like we can have a conversation. So on that aspect, definitely makes it easier.
It absolutely makes it easier to speak army to get integrated into the unit level. ⁓ like when I was working with the first unit that I worked with, they were like, we’re going to the field. I’m like, okay, cool. Like how many days are you going out? Do you bring your hammocks? And they’re like, what? I’m like, yeah, if you bring a hammock, like you can tie it to the trees. That usually gives a better sleep environment. And they were like, never thought of that before. And then people were bringing hammocks and they’re like, that was a good call. Strength coach guy. And they’re like, you must have been in the military. It’s like, was. So, so on that side, it’s pretty helpful. ⁓ there’s also coming from a special
operations background, there’s a little bit of respect because they know that you’ve done something hard. They know that you’ve been in their shoes. I would assume it’s the kind of the same way like if you play college football, the college football guys might give you a little inherent respect because they’re like, hey man, like I know you were in my shoes. Like you have some understanding of where I’m coming from. But on the human performance side, well, the
military experience was important and it does let me understand some of the intricacies of the human performance side. I think the college coaches can come in with a lot of knowledge and actually bring a little bit more to the table on the human performance side and change our way of thinking a little bit. Because I’m kind of like, when I first started, was like, yeah, this is what our coaches did. This is what I’ve always done. And some of the college guys came in there like, you tried this? Have you tried this? Have you tried this? And it’s like, ooh, those are good ideas. Let’s change some of that stuff up. Like, let’s do that. So we can help each other out is what works.
I think a mixed team works best.
Connor:
I was about to say, sounds like the perfect team is going to be half collegiate strength coaches and half former military.
Mark Christiani:
Yeah, that would be a great team. Because you got one side talking army and the other side really talking human performance at the highest possible level.
Connor:
Yeah.
Well, that’s one commonality that I’ve heard from friends of mine who have gone into the tactical sector. actually just had, I just had to connect a former intern of mine with another tactical strength coach because he messaged me and he was like, Hey, I don’t know what the hell these guys are saying. So can you please just connect me to somebody who can help me break this down? And I was like, yeah, for sure. So I’m sure it’s a very different language.
Mark Christiani:
you
It’s a challenge, And then there’s weird names for everything. If I told you to go to the S3 shop and get the long range calendar, you’d look at me and be like, uh-huh.
Connor:
Yeah, I’d be like, so we’re looking for a 24 month calendar? that…
Mark Christiani:
Yeah, and
I’m like, man, like just I got you like it just it just means if you understand what it means It’s like, okay cool two minutes later. I’m back If you don’t understand what it means, you’re on a wild goose chase for like your whole day
Connor:
That’s like
the mechanics looking for blinker fluid, right? Or the prank that they first play. Well, you know, I’m curious to see your thought process on development, especially for ⁓ your specific situations working with the Army Reserves. It’s a little bit different than most of the tactical positions I’ve heard of previously. How do you look at development for those you work with and, you know, what do you take into consideration when you look at the Army Reserves versus active military?
Mark Christiani:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So just some base differences between the Army Reserve and the active military. The average age of an Army Reserve soldier is about five years older than that of the active military. A large percentage of them have served in the active military at one point and have moved to the reserve. Where I work specifically full-time at like my home base location, the average soldier is in their late 30s? Is their age at the command center?
So we’re seeing a lot of older soldiers that are kind of in the second half of their career if not that like retirement set sector of their career So on the Army Reserve side, I like to think about it as like three phases of your career You have the early phase where your younger soldiers are and those might be the people that are starting out in the Army Reserve They’re going to college. They might be just transitioned like after two years maybe in the active army to the Army Reserve They’re a little bit younger
Those are the ones that I wanna teach as much as I can too. I wanna teach them how to work out. I wanna teach them how to eat. I wanna teach them how to mentally prepare themselves and get good sleep. And I wanna have them integrate it into their life. And then with the working out portion, I’m gonna focus a lot of their programming based around body weight movements, general mechanics, and just getting a good, like what you would see from a Joe Ken, like kind of Block Zero program, and then add some weights in there depending on their level.
That’s my soldiers that are younger. A lot of them didn’t play sports. So we got to start at like kind of ground level. We don’t want them getting hurt in their career because the goal is make it through a 20 year career. And in the Army Reserve, we have a lot of people who push that 30 plus year career.
Then the next phase is like second phase. That’s like mid-career. That’s when I get a lot of the soldiers that are, you know, five, six years active army, then they’re coming out. I get soldiers who have been in the army reserve for about 10 years or so. They’re around that like 30 years of age, which is about our average age in the army reserve coming up to that average, like 28 to 30 average age. Those are the soldiers probably push a little harder. They’ve been working out for some time. They’ve passed at…
you know, a number of PT tests at that time. And they should have some baseline understanding of how to work out what works best for them. So I can work with them a little bit more and speak their language like, hey, what do you like to do?
I don’t have to explain to you like bodyweight programming. I don’t have to explain to you run programming. Like just tell me what you would like to do. What have you done in the past? And we can figure out a program there based around some of the things that they like to do and some of the things that they probably need to do. And we can figure out their training program that way. And then there’s the end career individuals. The end career individuals, we are focused on feeling good.
and like doing a lot of like mobility stuff. Again, it mimics the beginner phase a little bit too. Like we’re going to do a lot of body weight stuff. We’re going to get good movement patterns. This group from his history in the military is the push-up sit-up run group. That was their, their PT test. That’s what they grew up doing. A lot of them have some sort of overuse injury.
lower body overuse injury in the past at some point. They don’t necessarily gravitate towards the gym or understand like gym workouts. And I try to educate them on the benefits of it, the benefits that it will have to their life outside the military. Cause a lot of these individuals in this third phase are getting ready to leave the military or they’re like, I’m at my 25 years. I got five more to go. I see you on the weekends. Like, what are you going to do to help me? It’s like, well, I’m going to help you feel good so you can pick up your kids ⁓ or your
kids like in a few years right like I have a number of grandparents that I trained and like if I were to say that on the active side they’d be like no yeah then nobody so that’s that’s a little bit of the difference there in that group it’s you know feel-good workouts but we’re also going to start make sure that we have enough aerobic base building in there and aerobic work in there to maintain that aerobic base that they’ve built over all the years of running I just might incorporate some biking some rowing
And then running if they’re still into that. Like I’ve got some individuals that are kind of in that group that are in the like coming up, you know, in their forties or so, and they’re, they’re running army 10 milers. So like they’re, they’re pushing pretty hard and we can push them a little bit harder too. But that’s how I kind of break down the three phases. And then through all of it, because I see soldiers irregularly on battle assembly weekends or drill weekends where I might see groups of soldiers once a month.
for like eight months and then maybe they have a month off. But like I see them for a number of months. I’m gonna try to build myself into their PT plans as education. So we might go out where they are and we’re gonna focus on how do you get a good workout at home if you don’t have any equipment? And we’re gonna show them body weight mechanics. We’re gonna show them ⁓ how to do a burpee properly, not just flop on the ground.
We’re gonna do running. We’re gonna show like hey if we do 10 squats here we run 50 meters we do 20 lunges here run 50 meters do 10 push-ups here and then we get to the pull-up bars and we do 10 pull-ups if we do that five or six times that’s a pretty good workout right guys and they’re like yeah that’s not bad it’s like have you ever thought about doing that it’s like never really done that before okay so it’s a little different though it’s not college strength and conditioning it’s it’s a little bit different ⁓
And then I also have the guys that played college sports that are like, I want a college strength program. I want to be fast. I want to jump high. I want to like crush it every day. And those guys, you know, they get a college strength program. So you really have to be agile. You have to be understanding and listen to the soldiers, what they have to say. And you got to educate yourself on lots of different programming styles.
If you’re like, only do West side programming and like that’s what we do. You’re going to meet somebody your first day. was like, I like to run. I want to run a half marathon. Help me. And you’re gonna be like, I, I do West side programming. It’s like, nah, man, you got to pick up running. So like my advice to younger coaches, I guess, coming into the field is like broaden your horizons, get a good education. That’s why I really liked working at Savannah state for that D for D two school is I get to work with a lot of different teams. And I’m sure.
Throughout your career, you’ve worked with a lot of teams and you can do that really quickly at like a D2 environment where you work with a lot of teams fast. And you learn a lot of things that way.
Connor:
Yeah, I’ve never regretted working with different teams. And I’ve certainly never regretted advising younger strength coaches to do the same as well. Because this year I had to pick up volleyball and I was like, OK, great. It wasn’t like this whole, OK, now I got to do a biomechanical analysis. I need to learn these things. I was just like, all right, great. It’s another team that I can work with. And I’ve learned some cool things in the process. You speak about education a lot. And I love the education piece because, again, it’s something that really
ultimately is the most important piece to me because at some point they’re going to leave you, right? We call it the 23 hour rule and collegiate side where it’s there’s 23 hours outside of this weight room. So what are you going to do? What does the education look like from an early career standpoint versus a later career standpoint?
Mark Christiani:
Oh yeah, so we have something similar. Like you call the other 23 hours. We call it the other 28 days. Because 28 days in a month they’re not with us. Yeah, a little different, but we can see. So our education is going to look pretty similar for the large group. We’re going to hit on why you need to do some physical training, but we’re going to go beyond.
Connor:
Much different, but a little different though.
Mark Christiani:
what the military tells you. Like the military tells you you have to pass your physical test and that you may be in a combat situation. In the Army Reserve, we don’t have a lot of combat MOSs. It’s very, very small amount of combat units. Most of the people are like your military intelligence types, ⁓ compute sustainment types. ⁓ There’s some engineers out there. There’s engineers be a little bit more combat related. ⁓
lot of mechanics a of Transportation companies those kind of things things that would support your combat personnel So for those individuals, it’s hard to be like you might be in combat someday and they’re like come on man Like I said buying a desk like you got to give me something else but playing on like a You don’t want to be that 40 year old or 50 year old
Cause I live in Florida. always say like, you don’t want to be that 40, 50 year old walking around Disney who can’t get up the stairs to go on the ride, right? Like you want to be able to move. Like you might feel good now when you’re younger, you’re 1920, 21 years old. Do you want to feel that way when you’re 50? And they’re like, yeah, like obviously it’s like, all right, cool. Doing this stuff now is going to pay off in the future. And instead of creating a very armyified program where it’s like, we’re going to practice for your AFT, your army fitness test, we’re going to do rucking.
like kit runs and all this stuff, we can do something that’s a little more functional that maybe tends to gear towards what you like to do 85 % of the time. And then 15 % of the time, we’re going to do some like sled drags and kettlebell carries, stuff that you might not like to do, maybe a little bit more running, things that are going to help you in your AFT to get you through that event. But you can do what you like the majority of the time, and that’s still good. And then on the…
Older side education, we’re doing a lot of very similar, like how are you going to feel good later in life? But we focus, I focus on the physical side as well, but I hit on the nutrition side a lot more with the young and the old group as more opposed than like the middle group. The middle group seems to like understand nutrition better. I don’t know where that happened, but maybe someone else educated them when they were younger. But like there’s a big nutrition education component.
Connor:
It’s a trend, I’ve noticed it, yeah.
Mark Christiani:
that goes into that because my goal is to get you through your entire career. then another, hopefully if you leave service in your 50s, I want you to get another 20, 30 years out of life where you’re pretty functional and like able to do things. And I can teach you some of those skills to do that. I can teach you some nutrition habits that are good. Like we can talk about drinking water the appropriate amount. We can talk about…
Hey man, this is a carb, this is a fat, this is a protein. So that you have the baseline understanding, we do nutrition labels a lot too, but we can talk about stuff that you have the baseline understanding where you can go to a grocery store, shop for yourself and be like, hey, this is generally healthy, this is generally not. And then that older group can pass that down to their kids and kind of build that up. And for them, I speak more like the family environment, like, hey.
This is how we do some meal prep and you can meal prep for you, your, you know, your spouse, your kids, you can get it all out, like all prepped and ready to go. And then you can have some food to bring to work. ⁓ that group, my older group tends to not eat. So like them, it’s trying to get to eat. My younger group tends to eat too much. So for them, it’s like, Hey guys, let’s try to portion control a little bit. And you know,
We learn our macros. So I run through everybody. I can teach them how to find their own macros and help out with that. That’s a pretty big hit. And then we have special populations, which are army body composition people. Those are individuals that are outside the height and weight standard.
And with them we work specifically, we do a little bit more nutrition education and we do a little bit more physical education based around maintaining good body composition.
Connor:
You know, I really appreciate the education aspect because it’s something that I feel like people with our background take for granted a little bit. ⁓ You know, I just learned yesterday ⁓ through TikTok that I live in an ingredient household, right? So there’s, you know, I saw a video of somebody saying, you know, we tried to cook food for the first time at home and it was $60. Like it was more expensive than to just go out to eat dinner. And then you literally saw on their receipt, it was like, okay, well you got cayenne pepper, garlic powder, like,
all these things that I have on hand at the house all the time. And then in the comments, it just kind of blew me away. I just didn’t really realize that people live a different life than I live because my wife is a dietitian and we are an ingredient household. There’s no ready to eat food. We make all our food and it’s very balanced meals. There’s always a carb, a protein and a vegetable. So it’s something that I feel like I take for granted certainly. ⁓ And so you have people who are part of the general population and then
Are part of the Army reserves as well like that education is just not something that’s as nearly as prevalent as it seems when you’re kind siloed in this athletic performance realm
Mark Christiani:
Absolutely. Also live in an ingredient household. So like, how did I figure that one out? Now that I know what it’s called, but I I figured that one out a while back. The younger soldiers, people forget that younger soldiers a lot of times are like 18, 19, 20 years old and they’re now living on their own in the active side. They are living in a barracks room. They’re on their own.
Connor:
Heheheheh. Bleh, heheheheh.
Mark Christiani:
On the reserve side, they might still have family around, but a lot of them live on their own for the first time. And it’s not college where they have a dining facility. They’re on their own. They’re paying bills. They might have a roommate or something. And maybe no one has taught them how to cook. No one has taught them how to shop. And if you run them through exactly what you talked about, like, hey, guys, if you invest a little in these ingredients here, you’re going to have them for like a year.
Like I’ll go through garlic powder that fast. You’re going to have it so you can make the same thing multiple times. But like you said, we probably take that for granted a little bit. You should see the aha moment when somebody is like. They realize that they get it put in front of them and they’re like, ⁓ man, you’re right. That’s smart. I should do that. ⁓
Connor:
Exactly.
It’s got to be incredible, seriously, because it’s a lifelong skill. And then I appreciate what you mentioned, too. It doesn’t just stop with that individual. It trickles down to the rest of their family because I didn’t know another way of living because that’s how my parents lived as well, too. you know, there was no there was never Tyson chicken nuggets. Like I didn’t know that those were a thing until I went to college. You know, so ultimately it was something I credit to my parents for being able to teach me the same habits to.
Mark Christiani:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Same, same, like coming from the same kind of background. Definitely helpful.
Connor:
Excellent. Well, you know, I’m curious too, you speak so highly of your internship experience and how it really helped transform your career. One of the things that I’ve noticed with the tactical side is there’s not nearly as much of an internship pipeline as there is with collegiate strength and conditioning where, you know, I get emails probably two to three a month from people asking, okay, how do I intern with you? What’s the process like? Where I rarely hear of.
in general, just internship positions within tactical side. What are your thoughts on that? Is there a way to kind of develop that internship pipeline a little bit more?
Mark Christiani:
Yeah, I think there needs to be. And I personally have been leaning on the NSCA Tactical Professional Development Group to do something about that. I’m sure they are sick of hearing from me because every LinkedIn post they make, I’m like, why haven’t you guys done the internship thing yet? And I send them emails. Yeah, yeah, it’s out there. ⁓
Connor:
⁓ Best way to be heard though.
Mark Christiani:
So have an intern right now. He’s from Maryville University. It’s online university. So he just happened to be from the area. He’s going to school online. He needed a internship. He did a sports one for his last semester at University of Nebraska. And he wanted a tactical one, ⁓ kind of balance himself out a little bit. ⁓ He got in contact with me through a network of other people. And we got him set up and he’s coming in working with me a few days every week, kind of seeing what we do. It’s a lot of program writing.
What did do? Like it’s not the most hands-on internship, I’m to be honest, but he writes a lot of programs now. So that is a skill. ⁓ But in the tactical setting, I think we need to develop some sort of internship pipeline.
Connor:
Well that’s great, that’s great experience though.
Mark Christiani:
specifically talking about the military right now, the army has hundreds and hundreds of jobs, strength coach jobs that will be coming available in the next five years. They already have hundreds of, they have hundreds of jobs and many of them are unfilled. They have hundreds more becoming available as they accelerate this holistic health and fitness rollout with strength coaches going to the brigades, but there’s no experiential like
internship for these people, their young coaches to kind of get geared in that direction to fall into those positions. They have to go to college, strengthen conditioning route, do like two or three years of collegiate internship and work and then they can come over. I personally think the military would benefit a lot from having a pipeline of if not interns, post college, have your CSCS, zero years of experience. ⁓
you start at maybe a lower salary rate, but still a salary rate and do a tier system where you have so many of those positions, so many of the more experienced, so many of the most experienced positions. And that would give you a pipeline of advancement. It would also give you a pipeline of young professionals to come into the field. Then they might not stay forever, but at least there’s gonna be that entry level, mid level and upper level professional. The other aspect of it is I think,
universities do not do a good job linking their people up who want tactical internships because it’s hard. They default to just go work for the sports teams.
I’ve talked to University of Florida, I’m going down there to do a guest lecture. We’re trying to get them linked up a little bit. ⁓ I know West Virginia guy, Brian Leary, one of the professors up there is pretty good about trying to link up with ⁓ tactical organizations. But from the university setting, we need to figure out as a like NSCA professional development group thing, which universities have tactical related classes and tactical pipelines? Because the tactical strength and conditioning class is becoming more popular.
lot of universities are starting to roll out that class. We take the class and some people get interested. They want to do it. You have a lot of prior service guys that want to do these kind of jobs. So we need to find those universities that have that available or that are teaching that and find programs in and around that local area that would be willing to accept interns and try and link them up with each other, like creating an internship network. And the sites themselves that accept interns need to be better about
letting people know that they accept interns. I know my intern right now that I have, he said, I was not his first call, I was his last call that got linked up through some friends, but he made no less than 10 inquiries on internships, emails, calls to different organizations, different tactical organizations and got no responses. So we as technical professionals also need to be a little better about understanding like,
Connor:
Wow.
Mark Christiani:
hey, we need to provide these internship opportunities. And I understand that it’s not always possible. Like certain military bases, you need security clearance to be on. No internships available. ⁓ Unless your university has a deal, you can kind of work something out that way. ⁓ Certain organizations, like the FBI, for example, is not going to be offering internships.
that’s just not going to happen. But a lot of fire departments, a lot of police departments, and I think the active army base H2F should really spend some time on developing an intern network and think about how it’s going to benefit them in the long run. It’s just like when you get a new soldier.
You get someone new like an E1, signs up, they go to basic training, they learn some things, they become an E2. If their career progresses, they become an E5 and they oversee some people. We need young strength coaches come in, learn some things, progress. Maybe they oversee a young strength coach, progress, and then maybe they oversee a few coaches and they progress and oversee a team. Until we have that progression built in and until we start linking up professionals who are willing to take interns with universities that have tactical, interested students,
We’re not really going to build the profession from the ground up. What we’re gonna get a lot of is guys who worked in college and there’s nothing wrong with this. This works all the time, but they worked in college and they wanna come over to the tactical setting and they do. And unfortunately, I think sometimes they’re disappointed because they come over and they’re used to, I’ve got sick, you know, I work.
six groups in six hours at the university setting. Then I do some programming and then I do some team activities. I do maybe a little rehab and stuff. It’s like in the tactical setting, it’s like you have an hour and half most mornings and you got to hit as many people as you can. You got to figure out how to move people around. You got to figure out how to divvy up the equipment. You’ve got to figure out some days people aren’t going to want to work with you. So what are you going to do to build that relationship? What are you going to do to build that inherent trust at a university?
It’s built, inherent trust is built in in a collegiate strength and conditioning program. When you showed up at App State, I bet all the students knew what a strength coach was, because they had them before. In the army, in the Marines, the Air Force, not everyone has had, especially the fire police as well, not everyone has had a strength coach before. So when you come in, they’re like, well, I don’t have a head football coach or head basketball coach or volleyball coach telling me I need to do this thing. Why should I do it?
Connor:
For sure.
Mark Christiani:
you have to sell yourself, kind of that entrepreneurial mindset, sell yourself a little bit more. And in the tactical setting, like specifically,
We find that people seem to get into it they spend like a year and they’re like me I don’t get to coach enough where I don’t like that It’s like you have to go beyond being a strength coach. You also have to be the wellness coordinator You also have to learn your nutrition stuff You also have to stay up what’s on tik-tok and Instagram because soldiers are gonna inevitably come to you and be like this dude on Instagram smarter than you told me to do something and I’m gonna be like That’s not smart. That’s not good. Please don’t do that
Connor:
Great. ⁓
Mark Christiani:
It’s going to be there and you have to spend time outside of work kind of understanding and learning those things. Just because you’re the you’ve got a college degree or the human performance guy, maybe you worked with some sports teams, they’re not going to trust you. But if you get out and like throw on a rock and go on a five mile rep with them when they go for a rock, they’re like, all right, coach, like what you got for us? How would we how could that be easier? Like how are you going to make us better?
And they start to trust you and you build that a little bit. The guys who are prior service tend to understand that a little bit more just because it’s where they came from, right? Like it’s easy to understand once you’ve been there. And the guys who come from college want that inherent trust that they had in college and it’s not there yet.
10 years from now it’ll be there 10 years from now it’ll be there it’ll strength coaches will be the way it’s always been done new strength coach comes in it’s like okay coach like old coach had us do this what do you want us to do but right now it’s so new in the military setting and most police and fire settings that that inherent trust isn’t there yet so you have to build that trust and you have to spend a lot of time building that culture to breach the most soldiers airmen
Guardians, that’s what they call space wars, guardians possible.
Connor:
Well, really, my, you know, every problem or anything that I kind of thought of kind of popped up to me immediately. ⁓ when you were describing, you know, the different things that this internship pipeline could solve, like initially what you spoke about, ⁓ being told you have to get three to five years of experience in the collegiate sector, then that’s how you get into the tactical side. ⁓ obviously now you can have a direct tactical internship to then, ⁓ hopefully, like you said, a salaried position. but.
To me, what’s really interesting about that aspect is exactly like it is with collegiate strength and conditioning, you don’t get surprised. You don’t find out that these things are not what you wanted. My experience with football was fantastic. I found out I don’t want to work with football. But again, it saved me from, okay, I have a good job now that I like. Maybe I feel like there’s something out there for me a little bit more. And then a football position opens up and all of a I uproot my family. We all change everything.
I feel let down, it’s not what I really expected. And so that can solve to me a lot of maybe some retention issues that may be occurring with tactical strength and conditioning as well, just like there are some differences with the collegiate side and taking different jobs. So I think it solves a lot of problems and I really liked your explanation of it because to me it just makes sense.
Mark Christiani:
It does. ⁓ Here’s an army fact for you. They have five principles of patrolling and the last one is common sense. So you say like, hey man, that makes sense, fifth principle of patrolling. It’s like, that it does, it makes sense, that is common sense. We just need to get some people from the military setting and tactical setting that might not see it from the human performance setting, kind of in that mindset and understand how this short-term investment will pay off long-term.
Connor:
Well, and it really helps with the things you’re mentioning too, of you have to be able to have the soldiers buy in and people be invested in what you’re doing. You now have a year or two of experience of working directly with somebody and seeing how they did it. Ultimately, you can learn more of the language instead of just kind of being thrown in and then having to, like we said, have a complete disconnect and not know what people are talking about. ⁓ That can also help buy in as well. So, I might have to hop on LinkedIn with you as well and start commenting.
and start building the force of people pushing this forward.
Mark Christiani:
I would appreciate that. There are more than just me, but there are other people. There are people in the professional development group that are actively trying to push this forward. And keep in mind, it’s a volunteer position, so I don’t expect them to work full time on this. But like you said, kind of the squeaky wheel gets the grease sort of thing. It’s like, you let it die after mentioning it one or two times, it’s gonna die. But if you keep pushing it, more and more people will see it, and hopefully we are able to.
build a little bit of that more of that professional like internship kind of mindset, but also maybe a mentorship network that people can reach out to professionals. A lot of universities that have tactical programs don’t necessarily have anyone that’s worked in tactical teaching the program. They have someone that’s done a little research with like police or firefighters and they’re like, yeah, go be a tactical coach. I’ve seen it before. It’s like, okay, cool. But like research is really different than on the ground coaching. So.
Like having that input, like I said, I’m going to guest lecture at the University of Florida. They were nice enough. I spoke to the professor there that’s running the program and he’s like, yeah, I would love to have a coach out who’s like, hey, this is what I do for my career to talk to these guys and how you can get into it and all that stuff. So like maybe a mentor network and an internship network somewhere, something like that kind of come combined up. I know they’re working on that at the NSEA right now at the mentorship network. So students can reach out and then really building up the, I think the last aspect I’ll like get off
my soapbox after this one. But the last aspect is ⁓ at some of these national conferences like the NSA National Conference, they have a lot of students come because they can present posters and they’re looking for jobs. They’re students looking for jobs. They’re looking for careers.
Connor:
No, no, no, I love it. Please continue.
Mark Christiani:
At the tactical annual training, is the TSAC conference by the MSCA, it’s all professionals that already have jobs. Like there are barely any students there. So by implementing maybe poster presentation so universities can take some of those posters that would go to the national conference, bring them to the TSAC conference, get some students involved and then make it known more like that there are vendors there. Like you have contract companies, you have O2X, you have Circo, have Exos, you have KBR, all these contract companies that have strength hood
positions open are there trying to look for strength coaches and they just meet a bunch of people that already have jobs that like half of them work for them and they’re like, it’s like we more people. So like I would also give advice if you’re a young strength coach and you know the tacticals where you want to be come to the TSAC conference and get your name out there and start looking for jobs because there’s there’s people that are offering jobs and they’re not getting a lot of interest at that conference because the student body doesn’t show up. It’s not their fault.
Connor:
Hehehehe
Mark Christiani:
like you can only go to one a year you probably go to the National Conference but it’s something to look on if you’re a young professional and you want to do a career change that that’s a good place to meet people as well and hopefully we can get more students involved in that through the poster presentations and get a younger crowd there so it’s not the same I don’t know it’s the same group of us every year and then we all go and talk about the same thing every year we need some like young people show up like
Hopefully we get them in the field. Yeah.
Connor:
I love the call to action, let’s do it.
Absolutely. You gave one really good piece of advice as well about not just siloing into one sort of form of programming. I’m having that conversation right now. This former GA of mine actually just called me and he keeps asking me, because one of the big things we buy into here is starting strength. I love the starting strength method, especially for young developmental athletes.
What I tried to preface over and over and over again was this is one way to do things. This is not the only way I will teach you this way because this is what I’m good at. And this is what I can tell, you know, communicate to you. ⁓ but ultimately do not just buy into this one thing. And then he texted me the other day and was like, ⁓ Hey, how do I, ⁓ do starting strength with cross country specifically? Cause the coaches aren’t buying it. And I’m like, all right, man, like I tried to tell you, I tried to warn you about this, you know, ⁓ it’s, which is just a side note, but
you know, is there any other pieces of advice that you would like to give to young strength coaches besides not siloing and obviously attending the TSAC conference?
Mark Christiani:
⁓ I’d say build a professional network. Like. Be responsive and build a professional network and reach out. ⁓ I have a lot of students that reach out to me. I think like.
15 or so this year that have reached out in some capacity for like career advice. How do I get a job in this field? Hey, I saw that you did this. I would like to learn more about it. I personally always try to answer because when I was a student, I reached out to a lot of coaches and most of them answered me to be honest, like most of them answered and I learned a lot from those conversations. So being able to sit down and look at your professional network.
Talk to your professor, find people that are maybe in the field that you want to go into. Other strength coaches at the university that you’re going to, talk to them. They might have other people that they know. Like you know some people in the tactical setting. If a student came to you and was like, hey, I’m interested in this, do you think you could help me out in linking up with somebody? You would have somebody for them to talk to. Right now, I think a lot of students are scared.
to like ask, hey, can you help me out? And in our profession, strength coaches generally help each other out. We don’t get paid very much. Like we got overworked, but we are there for each other to help out. It is part of the, like you put in your time and you’re like, you want other people to do this job. Like I’m excited when people tell me they want to be a strength coach. I’d love to hear they want to be a strength coach. I do tell them like, I hope your spouse has a good job, but we.
If you build that professional network, you can then find a job. Like that’s how you’re gonna find your job. It’s someone’s gonna talk to somebody that gets you a job. I can count like a number of coaches that I’ve helped that have linked up with me and they’re like, I’m really looking for a job in tactical. I’ve got this experience. I’m like, hey, go talk to this guy. They have jobs. like, know, within a week or two, they’re like, I got an interview.
It’s like, great, that’s awesome, man. I can’t do much past that, but I can get you in the door for an interview. There are jobs out there. So if you are a young professional and you’re looking for a career, reach out to somebody in tactical. People are pretty responsive. We’re tight-knit community. Strength Coach World is a small community. Tactical Strength Coach World is a smaller community. And we are willing to help. People are really willing to help. So building that professional network is one of the most valuable things I think you can do as a young strength coach.
Connor:
Yeah, you know, and I appreciate you encouraging that because I feel like it’s something that people say a lot. But then I think sometimes younger strength coaches kind of just are like, yeah, people just say that. Right. And it’s like, no, if you hear it from multiple people in multiple, multiple different sectors, it’s got to be correct. Right. So I appreciate you saying that, you know, Mark, I really appreciate everything. This has been a very, very fun podcast for me. And especially to be able to shed some light on the internship experience. I think that’s really cool just to hear about how it could
really make a full difference in the tactical side. Ultimately, I don’t know if you have Instagram or if there’s any way that anybody could reach out to you, what would be the best way to do that?
Mark Christiani:
So don’t have Instagram. LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a really good way to reach out to me. Just Mark Christiani on LinkedIn. C-H-R-I-S-T-I-A-N-I. If you leave the H out, there is another Mark Christiani without an H that is also a strength coach that was also a ranger that also lives in Florida. But yeah, Mark Christiani, my bio picture is a dude with a beard. It looks like me. Please reach out to me though. ⁓
Connor:
All good.
Yeah.
my goodness.
Yeah
Mark Christiani:
And if anyone reaches out to you directly at the podcast, just feel free forward them on over to me. And then you can also find me on the O2X website, O2Xhumanperformance, just o2x.com and the like meet our staff section. I’m under there. You can find my email and everything as well.
Connor:
Excellent. Yeah, if they’re looking at a specific profile picture, I would give you a ⁓ Javier Bardem lookalike as well too. ⁓ Excellent. Well, thank you, Mark. I really appreciate everything.
Mark Christiani:
I think my profile picture I have a little more hair because it was like two years ago.
Yeah, thanks, Goddard. It’s been great.
Connor:
Absolutely, I’ve had a lot of fun.
